GARY — Hollowed out homes and graffiti-marred buildings are easy to find, but now the city has a precise street-by-street road map to the urban blight that impacts one in five houses.

Officials said Wednesday they hope the 18-month survey of 60,000 parcels will spark a high-tech strategy to deal with a decades of decay.

About 13 percent of the 12,394 structures deemed blighted by the survey were inhabited, a number that surprised officials.

"It cuts to the core of challenges we have around poverty and housing," said Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson. She said she told her public safety chiefs to check on people living in blighted houses because of the bitter cold weather and the possibility of fires.

About 200 volunteers, including graduate students in the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, went block by block, using their smartphones to log in vacant homes.

They identified 6,902 vacant houses and 554 vacant commercial buildings. Overall, at total of 12,393 structures were considered blighted. The results can be found on garymaps.com.

The data is considered a baseline for the technical assistance the city is receiving from the Center for Community Progress, a Washington-based organization that studies and analyzes urban blight solutions. Gary is one of four cities to receive the assistance.

Carole Carlson, Post-Tribune

An abandoned home sits on the corner of Vermont Street and 22nd Avenue in the Midtown section of Gary. It's one of the hardest hit by blight, officials said Wednesday.

An abandoned home sits on the corner of Vermont Street and 22nd Avenue in the Midtown section of Gary. It's one of the hardest hit by blight, officials said Wednesday. (Carole Carlson, Post-Tribune)

"We have sort of an all-star team of nerds," said redevelopment director Joseph Van Dyk of the expertise the city is receiving. He called them "civic technicians" and said, "Instead of going to Wall Street, they are going to Silicon Valley."

He said data from disparate sources, such as code enforcement, police, zoning, and the law department would be meshed together by the experts.

"We can get the best idea to allocate resources and identify opportunities for investment," he said.

Van Dyk said downtown, west of Broadway, had the most blight, followed by Midtown.

Freeman-Wilson estimated about 300 people were living in abandoned structures. "We're forming a task force to check on those folks," she said. In some cases, they're starting fires to stay warm and destroyed the structure, she said.

In addition, Freeman-Wilson said there will be a new drive to hold property owners of blighted structures accountable. "We have to hold them responsible. We are exploring the legal process."

The city's abandoned home problem gained national attention in October when an accused serial killer led police to the bodies of six dead women found within abandoned homes in a 5-mile stretch across the city.

The city is in the process of demolishing more than 400 homes with a $6.5 million state grant received last year.